USB Standard Organization vs Open Source

One of the main problems for amateurs and small companies involved in the sale of hardware with a USB port is today the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) - an organization dedicated to the development of specifications for the USB bus; Such companies as Intel, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard take part in it.



The essence of this problem is as follows. Each USB device that is sold requires USB certification for compliance, for which it needs to have a vendor ID (vendor ID, VID) and product ID (product ID, PID). Major players in the amateur market - such as Sparkfun or Adafruit - have long paid the USB-IF for getting a USB VID; the trouble is that any craftsman who has built a USB device in his garage and is hoping to sell it - even if they sell dozens-a hundred pieces from strength - also have to pay for it.

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As a solution to this problem, Arachnid Labs offered an interesting idea: since individual manufacturers of USB devices (like Microchip or FTDI) distributed some of their USB PIDs for free, you could create your own non-profit organization that would buy one VID and distribute the PID to its participants engaged in the development of open hardware. As a result, many devices made by amateurs would get USB-compatible status.



But VTM Group, a company that manages the public relations, public relations and legal aspects of USB-IF, didn’t like this idea. The entire correspondence can be read on the Arachnid Labs website , the proposals for creating a VID for open source have not even reached the USB-IF participants who are directly involved in issuing IDs, but the VTM Group company responded with the following unpleasant request:

Please stop immediately raising funds to purchase a unique USB VID for the purpose of transferring, reselling or licensing the associated PIDs, and remove all references to USB-IF, VID and PID that allow you to produce this from your site and elsewhere.

The community still has ways to bypass the VTM Group solution - for example, continue to “hide” behind the USB VID 0xF055 - but the lack of open PIDs makes Arachnid Labs look for new ways to get them legally - now they are going to try to go directly to people from HP, Intel, and Microsoft working in usb-if.



Source: hackaday.com , arachnidlabs.com , hackernews .